"you are awfully eager to accept Heritage's spin and overlook its lack of numbers"

hahahaha!!! You're the one that used it as a source!!!!!!

Pittsburgh PA

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"That's just fuzzy logic. Congress circumvented the President and his veto....so who has the POWER??? It ain't the President, obviously."

You have a very strange way of looking at things. The majority party in Congress knows it can't pass a bill one year because of a threatened presidential veto, but you think that's proof of congressional power, not the power of the presidential veto. The Congress defers action until the next year solely because enactment can't occur without a different President, but you say Presidents don't matter. Your theory is that this example demonstrates the power Congress has to circumvent the outgoing President. As strained as your logic is, it applies only to a lame duck President on his way out of office, which only happens every four or eight years. Alice in Wonderland comes to mind.

Belle Chasse LA

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"Didn't Moody's pretty much say it in their release statement? That the fight itself was a huge reason for the downgrade?"

Yeah, and consumer confidence did plummet right after that, and remained abysmally low for several months before recovering. How much it would have been, and how much it actually affected the economy, I don't know. I just think it was a lot, for some unknown period of time.

Belle Chasse LA

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"Talk about not reading/understanding an article!!"

I understood it just fine; apparently, you didn't. For someone who is always saying to look at actual numbers rather than spin, you are awfully eager to accept Heritage's spin and overlook its lack of numbers.

So, what can we conclude from the numbers that actually are there? They support my statement that the omnibus appropriation Obama signed in March totaled $1.05 trillion of the total $3.52 trillion spent that year. That is, I correctly observed that the 2009 spending pie was mostly baked before Obama was in the kitchen; an observation to which you incorrectly responded "NO." That's one for me, zip for you.

The Heritage piece also stated that "President Obama signed most of the spending attributed to President George W. Bush’s last year in office," which is beyond mere spin and is flatly belied by the actual numbers cited in the article itself. Unless, that is, $1.05 trillion is somehow "most" of $3.52 trillion. So much for Heritage's (and your) idea of "unethical and fuzzy math." (If you're keeping score, it's 2-0.)

The numbers in that article also do confirm my statement (doubted by you) that the $410 B discretionary part of that appropriation was only $19 B higher than Bush's request. 3-0

As to the $600 B entitlement part of the appropriation, there is no breakdown whatsoever of how much of it represented increases initiated by Obama. The article only throws out some total numbers and mentions a couple of programs increased under Obama's stimulus (artfully omitting their actual dollar amount).

To the uncritical eye (yours included), this might leave the false impression that all of the total increase was due to Obama initiatives. So much for your faux dedication to actual numbers. 4-0

The bottom line is that you and and others happily repeat that Obama added over $1.4 trillion to the debt in fiscal 2009, without being able to identify anything he actually did to get there. He did add to the spending, but only by a small fraction of what you assume. Total spending under the stimulus in 2009, as calculated by the CBO, was only about $120 B, a far cry from the debt you attribute to Obama. 5-0

I knew you were either unable or unwilling to dig into the actual facts and numbers like I have. It's much easier for you to parrot Heritage spin than actual facts. 6-0. Game, set and match.

The next time you start a new thread, maybe you should title it Dishonest Debate 101.

Didn't Moody's pretty much say it in their release statement? That the fight itself was a huge reason for the downgrade?

East Fishkill NY

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" The Heritage article goes on to point out that Congress deferred action on that appropriation until after the presidential transition, because Bush had threatened to veto the $19 billion increase. I guess Heritage agrees with me that Presidents really do matter when it comes to fiscal matters. "

That's just fuzzy logic. Congress circumvented the President and his veto....so who has the POWER??? It ain't the President, obviously.

DUH!

Pittsburgh PA

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This last part applies perfectly to YOU

"his is unethical and fuzzy math. The Truth-O-Meter may want to consider these facts when further analyzing the complications and distortions in analysis used by Nutting to argue that Obama is more fiscally responsible than his predecessors."

Pittsburgh PA

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This was easier to find than I thought it would be. From the Heritage, May 24, 2012, by Brian Darling: "CQ estimated that the final spending bill “provided about $31 billion more in discretionary funding than was included in the fiscal 2008 versions of the nine bills” which is “about $19 billion more than Bush sought.”

Funny side note: The Heritage article goes on to point out that Congress deferred action on that appropriation until after the presidential transition, because Bush had threatened to veto the $19 billion increase. I guess Heritage agrees with me that Presidents really do matter when it comes to fiscal matters.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Talk about not reading/understanding an article!!

"Bush issued a veto threat on the bloated spending bills pending in Congress in late 2008. CQ estimated that the final spending bill “provided about $31 billion more in discretionary funding than was included in the fiscal 2008 versions of the nine bills” which is “about $19 billion more than Bush sought.” I would argue that Obama gets credit for the whole $31 billion in new spending. The most damning fact from the CQ piece is that “Bush had threatened to veto spending bills that exceeded his request.”

"Overall spending, mandatory and discretionary spending went from $2.98 trillion in FY 2008 to $3.52 trillion in FY 2009. There were two of the big spikes in spending from FY’08 to ’09. One was in Federal Payments for Individuals not including Social Security and Medicare from $758 billion in FY’08 to 918 billion in FY’09. President Obama’s Stimulus spending bill included an increase in food stamps and an extension of unemployment benefits that should not be attributable to President Bush. Also, the category of “Other Federal” spending spiked from $261 billion to $540 billion. This includes TARP spending that was recovered on the back end by President Obama further distorting the Nutting analysis.?

Pittsburgh PA

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"OK, if we had still had Clinton's economy (less debt and no deficit) and all else was the same"

Well, it wouldn't have been entirely the same anyway. A recession started about the time that Bush took office, that would have temporarily interrupted the surpluses in any event. No one can fairly blame Bush for that.

The 2001 recession was a run of the mill correction of an overheated economy, especially in the tech sector (Remember Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" line?) It wasn't a housing, or commodities, or financial system recession. It could have sorted itself out without too much pain, by using normal, relatively modest, time-limited fiscal and monetary actions.

My problem with Bush is that he used that recession as an excuse to push an ideology-driven set of tax cuts, rather than a policy-driven response to the recession. Then, he followed up with a reckless, often off-budget and unfunded, borrow-and-spending spree.

Instead of quickly getting back to debt-reduction and being better prepared for a rainy day, he doubled the debt. But that debt didn't trigger the recession.

The debt did hamper responses to the recession. A much larger and more sustained stimulus could have juiced an economic bounce-back without worrying as much about the debt.

And while I can't really prove this, I'm convinced the debt ceiling fiasco did huge damage to investor and consumer confidence, which are key requirements for economic recovery.

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